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Suburbs are commonly defined as residential areas on the outskirts of a city or large town.[1] Residents of suburbs tend to live in single-family homes and commute by automobile to work. Suburbs tend to have some degree of political autonomy and lower population density than urban neighborhoods. The automobile enabled the growth of suburbs, which tend to proliferate near cities with an abundance of adjacent flat land. [2]
The word is derived from the Old French "subb urbe" and ultimately from the Latin "suburbium," formed from "sub," meaning "under," and "urbis," meaning "wall" or "walled city." The first recorded usage, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, comes from Wycliffe in 1380, where the form "subarbis" is used.
In the United States, Canada and most of Western Europe the word "suburb" usually refers to a separate municipality, borough or unincorporated area outside a central town or city. This definition is evident, for example, in the title of David Rusk's book Cities Without Suburbs (ISBN 0-943875-73-0 ), which promotes metropolitan government; in the UK, much of this pattern dates to Margaret Thatcher's reforms of 1985. US colloquial usage sometimes shortens the term to "'burb" (with or without the apostrophe), and "The Burbs" first appeared as a term for the suburbs of Chicago.
This division is not as prevalent in Ireland and the United Kingdom, where "suburb" refers to residential neighbourhoods outside of the city centre. In Australia and New Zealand, the term "suburb" is also used by the postal service to mean an address subdivision. In Australia, the terms inner suburb and outer suburb are used to differentiate between the higher-density suburbs with close proximity to the city center, and the lower-density suburbs on the outskirts of the urban area. Inner suburbs, such as Te Aro in Wellington, Prahran in Melbourne and Ultimo in Sydney, are usually characterised by higher density apartment housing and greater integration between commercial and residential areas.
The term suburbia is frequently used to encapsulate the concept of suburbs as oddly picturesque slices of tract-home nuclear family.
After the rise of "Levittowns" across the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, many American teens born during those decades began to describe the inherently sanitized and disspiriting nature of American suburbs.
The popular TV show "The Wonder Years," which was set in the late 1960s and early 1970s took place in an undisclosed suburb. In the very first episode, the show's narrator comments on the seeming sameness of suburbia, in the ending narration noting that despite the rows of identical houses and carports, within each one are people with unique stories and individual lives.
The concept of "suburbia" came to envelop this and other, sometimes endearing, idiosyncrasies of suburban life -- for example, 4th of July backyard barbecues.
Popular culture largely recognized this concept during the 1980s and early 1990s. In Britain, television series such as The Good Life, Butterflies, and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin depicted suburbia as well-manicured but relentlessly boring, and its residents as either conforming their behaviour to this situation or going stir crazy through its regimented blandness. In America, similar but more violent themes could be found in the works of David Lynch.
In 1994, playwright Eric Bogosian wrote and directed the play subUrbia, which focused on suburban twentysomethings with no real life goals or direction reacting to the return of a high school friend who had become famous. The play was made into a low-budget, independent film in 1997, with Richard Linklater at the directorial helm and featured up-and-coming actors Steve Zahn, Parker Posey, Ajay Naidu, and Giovanni Ribisi in lead roles.
Etymology: According to dialogue in the 1984 movie Suburbia (no relation to the Bogosian version) [3] ,'subtopia' is a neologism made by combining suburb and utopia.
Suburban development can be classified into 5 simple components, each separated from one another and homogenous in nature.
The growth of suburbs was facilitated by the development of zoning laws, redlining and various innovations in transport. After World War II availability of FHA loans stimulated a housing boom in American suburbs. In the older cities of the northeast U.S., streetcar suburbs originally developed along train or trolley lines that could shuttle workers into and out of city centers where the jobs were located. This practice gave rise to the term bedroom community or dormitory, meaning that most daytime business activity took place in the city, with the working population leaving the city at night for the purpose of going home to sleep.
The growth in the use of trains, and later automobiles and highways, increased the ease with which workers could have a job in the city while commuting in from the suburbs. In the United Kingdom, railways stimulated the first mass exodus to the suburbs. The Metropolitan Railway, for example, was active in building and promoting its own housing estates in the north-west of London, consisting mostly of detached houses on large plots, which it then marketed as "Metro-land". [3] As car ownership rose and wider roads were built, the commuting trend accelerated as in North America. This trend towards living away from towns and cities has been termed the urban exodus.
Zoning laws also contributed to the location of residential areas outside of the city centre by creating wide areas or "zones" where only residential buildings were permitted. These suburban residences are built on larger lots of land than in the urban city. For example, the lot size for a residence in Chicago is usually 125 feet (38 m) deep, while the width can vary from 14 feet (4 m) wide for a row house to 45 feet (14 m) wide for a large standalone house. In the suburbs, where standalone houses are the rule, lots may be 85 feet (26 m) wide by 115 feet (35 m) deep, as in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Manufacturing and commercial buildings were segregated in other areas of the city.
Increasingly, due to the congestion and pollution experienced in many city centers (accentuated by the commuters' vehicles), more people moved out to the suburbs, known as suburbanisation. Moving along with the population, many companies also located their offices and other facilities in the outer areas of the cities. This has resulted in increased density in older suburbs and, often, the growth of lower density suburbs even further from city centers. An alternative strategy is the deliberate design of "new towns" and the protection of green belts around cities. Some social reformers attempted to combine the best of both concepts in the Garden city movement. [4]
In the United States, urban areas have often grown faster than city boundaries since the 18th century. Until the 1900s, new neighborhoods usually sought or accepted annexation to the central city to obtain city services. In the 20th century, however, many suburban areas began to see independence from the central city as an asset. In some cases, suburbanites saw self-government as a means to keep out people they considered undesirable, such as immigrants and African Americans. Federal subsidies for suburban development accelerated this process as did the practice of redlining by banks and other lending institutions.[5] Cleveland, Ohio is typical of many American central cities; its municipal borders have changed little since 1922, even though the Cleveland urbanized area has grown many times over. Several layers of suburban municipalities now surround cities like Cleveland, Chicago and Philadelphia.
While suburbs had originated far earlier, the suburban population in North America exploded after World War II. Returning veterans wishing to start a settled life moved en masse to the suburbs. Between 1950 and 1956 the resident population of all US suburbs increased by 46%. Levittown developed as a major prototype of mass-produced housing. During the same period of time, African-Americans were rapidly moving north for better jobs and educational opportunities than they could get in the segregated South, and their arrival in Northern cities en masse further stimulated white suburban migration, a phenomenon known as white flight.
In the U.S., 1950 was the first year that more people lived in suburbs than elsewhere. (1) In the U.S, the development of the skyscraper and the sharp inflation of downtown real estate prices also led to downtowns being more fully dedicated to businesses, thus pushing residents outside the city centre. By 1980 this was often perceived as undesirable, extending travel times and adding to people's sense of isolation and fear in central areas outside trading hours.(before roughly 7AM and after roughly 6PM.)
Urban development in Canada has largely paralleled development in the United States. After World War II, large bedroom communities of single-family homes and shopping centers sprouted on the outskirts of Canadian cities.
However, Canada has far fewer suburban municipalities than the U.S. does. Many large cities, such as Winnipeg, Calgary and Ottawa, extend all the way to, and even include the countryside. The boundaries of Canadian cities are under the jursidiction of the Provinces and the Province's have imposed city-suburb mergers. The Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver areas still have suburban municipalities, although their suburban areas are generally grouped into fewer cities than is typical in the U.S. Ontario created a "metropolitan" government for the Toronto area in 1954, but the urbanized area has since grown well beyond it.
Today, Toronto has some of the largest suburban municipalities in North America, with more than three quarters of a million people living in Mississauga alone. Many Toronto suburbs have significantly improved on the suburban philosophy, adding a downtown to many suburban centres (Markham, Brampton, Scarborough, North York etc.)
Typically, many post-World War II American suburbs have been characterized by:
Some suburban areas have developed their own large clusters of office and retail buildings, usually in a business park setting. These areas, such as Tysons Corner, Virginia, Parsippany, New Jersey & Pontiac, MI, are sometimes referred to as "edge cities", a term invented by journalist Joel Garreau. Edge cities differ from traditional downtowns in that they are completely automobile-centric rather than providing options for walking, bicycles, or public transportation.
In many parts of the globe, however, suburbs are economically poor areas, inhabited by people sometimes in real misery, keeping them at the limit of the city borders for economic or social reasons like the impossibility of affording the (usually higher) costs of life in the town. An example in the developed world would be the banlieues of France, or the concrete suburbs of Sweden, which are comparable to the inner cities of the US.
In the UK, the government is seeking to impose minimum densities on newly approved housing schemes in parts of southeast England. The new catchphrase is 'building sustainable communities' rather than housing estates. However, commercial concerns tend to retard the opening of services until a large number of residents have occupied the new neighbourhood.
In the Third World, such slum areas are often irregularly built or managed, with individualistic, unregulated building and other forms of social or legal disorder. It has been said that this would be sometimes a case of spontaneous or psychological apartheid. In some cases inhabitants just live off the waste materials produced by the city (like, increasingly, around new African towns) and usually in such situations suburbs and houses are roughly built, often not even in the traditional building materials, as seen for example in the bidonvilles. Often nomads settle their camps in suburbs. The occupiers of more industrialised or longer-lasting homes may refer to such suburbs as "shanty towns".
In the illustrative case of Rome, Italy, in the 1920s and 1930s, suburbs were intentionally created ex novo in order to give lower classes a destination, in consideration of the actual and foreseen massive arrival of poor people from other areas of the country. Many critics have seen in this development pattern (that was circularly distributed in every direction) also a quick solution to a problem of public order (keeping the unwelcome poorest classes - together with criminals, in this way better controlled - comfortably remote from the elegant "official" town). On the other hand, the expected huge expansion of the town soon effectively covered the distance from the central town, and now those suburbs are completely engulfed by the main territory of the town, and other newer suburbs were created at a further distance from them.
Contrary to popular belief, suburbs typically have more traffic congestion and longer travel times than traditional neighborhoods.[6] Only the traffic within the short cul-de-sac streets themselves is less. This is due to three factors: almost-mandatory automobile ownership, longer travel distances and the hierarchy system, which is less efficient at distributing traffic than the traditional grid of streets.
In the suburban system (sometimes also called a 'sprawl' network'), any trip from one component to another component requires that cars enter a collector road (because most or all houses are located in cul-de-sacs), no matter how short or long the distance is. This is compounded by the hierarchy of streets, , where entire neighborhoods and subdivisions are dependent on one or two collector roads. Because all traffic is forced onto these roads, they are often heavy with traffic all day. If an accident occurs on a collector road, or if construction inhibits the flow, then the entire road system may be rendered useless until the blockage is cleared. The traditional, 'grown' grid in turn allows for a larger number of choices and alternate routes.
Suburban systems of the sprawl type are also quite inefficient for cyclists or pedestrians, as the direct route is usually not available for them either. This encourages car trips even for distances as low as several hundreds of meters (which may have become up to several kilometres due to the road network). Improved sprawl systems, though retaining the car detours, possess cycle paths and foot paths connecting across the arms of the sprawl system, allowing a more direct route while still keeping the cars out of the residential streets.
Many suburbs have become famous in their own right. This can be either due to the wealth and prestige associated with the suburb, or because of an event occurring in, or a person or group originating from, the suburb.
Perhaps the best-known American suburb is Beverly Hills, California, a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. Other well-known suburbs include Shaker Heights, near Cleveland, which was one of the first planned garden communities in the U.S.; the North Shore area above Chicago; the Grosse Pointe region of Michigan, near Detroit; the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia; affluent Long Island, New York, Yonkers,NY, Mount Vernon,NYand New Rochelle,NY and Fairfield County, Connecticut, where most towns are suburbs of New York City (much of the lower Hudson River Valley in New York is also a suburb of New York City); much of Northern New Jersey, with New York City and cities in North Jersey serving as employment centers; Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft and Nintendo's American division, near Seattle; and Arlington, Virginia outside Washington, DC, where The Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery are located.
Because of different local government patterns, suburbs of one city may be bigger than a central city in another area. The most-populous suburb in the United States is Mesa, Arizona near Phoenix, with an estimated population of 442,780 in 2005 — more than Atlanta, Cincinnati, or Pittsburgh. Virginia Beach, with a population of around 450,000 is the largest city in the state of Virginia; some would consider it a suburb of Norfolk because the urban core of its region is in Norfolk. Canada's largest suburb, Mississauga, Ontario, has nearly 700,000 people, greater than Vancouver, Boston, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.
Some suburbs swell so fast that they take over the politics of the counties they are built in. This happened in the 1990s to three suburbs in Florida: The Villages, Palm Bay and Deltona.
In Australia, many of the most famous suburbs are associated with sport, however the majority of these suburbs are unknown outside of Australia, unlike U.S. suburbs such as Beverly Hills.
The popularity of Australian Rules Football, and the tradition of naming the club after the suburb or city in which it is based, has led to several inner suburbs of Melbourne becoming well-known throughout the country. These clubs include St. Kilda, Collingwood, Carlton, Essendon, Richmond and Hawthorn. Most of these areas have other attractions, but none, with the possible exception of St. Kilda, would be a household name without the football club.
In the north-eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland, the homes of National Rugby League teams play a similar role.
The Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba is famous as the location of the city's cricket ground, known colloquially as The Gabba.
The Sydney suburbs of Bondi and Manly, and the beaches of the same names, are known as the origin of surf lifesaving.
In Melbourne, Albert Park is known as the home of the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit.
The following is a table of the largest incorporated suburbs worldwide, with over 800 thousand people. Only census data is listed. (Except cities that require exact records of birth/death/move registration such in Japan, and Brazil which estimates all its cities annually)
Indonesia and India census populations are from citypopulation.de
Census data is self-evident as it is published extensively, census dates for all nations are available here and national statistical agencies here.